drone footage question

New_Zealand

New_Zealand

Veteran
I'm going to have an opening shot of a view moving across the desert coming upon my two talents walking. The guy that has a Drone is having a hard time understanding what I want or maybe I'm just really bad explaining it. I tried finding something on youtube to give him an idea but no luck. The shot that I want to achieve is the camera moving about maybe 20ft off the ground towards my talents and just go over the top of them.
 
It's a popular shot in almost any movie with aerials close to talent...not sure how he doesn't understand what you're looking for (unless he has safety concerns).

Maybe explain it's just a long drone shot starting from far away and eventually flying over the people.
 
New_Zealand said:
I'm going to have an opening shot of a view moving across the desert coming upon my two talents walking. The guy that has a Drone is having a hard time understanding what I want or maybe I'm just really bad explaining it. I tried finding something on youtube to give him an idea but no luck. The shot that I want to achieve is the camera moving about maybe 20ft off the ground towards my talents and just go over the top of them.
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Your explanation isn't especially clear to me. Is the drone just flying in a straight line? E.g. 20ft off the ground, travels a certain distance before passing over the top of the talent? Why not take the visuals out of it and tell the drone operator all they need to do is fly in a straight line?

Check if the drone can legally fly directly over people. In Australia your'e not supposed to fly over anyone. You can see this rule being violated all the time at many levels of production. I'd push to do everything by the book. You hear all sorts of stories of drone businesses "reporting" their competitors for breaking the rules.
 
Sounds pretty straight forward to me. Why don't you visually show. Just take readily availble desk items to simulate the shot. tell him where you want the drone movement to be and where you want the camera to be pointed during the drone movement.

With rgards to flying over people...in the US No person may operate a small unmanned aircraft over a human being unless that human being is:

(a)Directly participating in the operation of the small unmanned aircraft; or

(b) Located under a covered structure or inside a stationary vehicle that can provide reasonable protection from a falling small unmanned aircraft.

Not sure if actors qualify for option A. Or if you can fly right between the two people if they are 4 feet apart for instance, as a workaround. The regulations aren't always so clear cut. If you want to play it safe, you could always apply for a waiver. Again this is with regards to the US and the FAA
 
Draw two diagrams. First an overhead view showing the track of the aircraft relative to the actors. Underneath the first diagram draw a second that shows altitude on the y axis and time on the x axis. If camera orientation should change add arrows along the track lines.
 
If you have any experience with CG, you could do an animatic. This will let you show timing, framing, etc and should take more than 30 to put together.
 
egproductions said:
Not sure if actors qualify for option A. Or if you can fly right between the two people if they are 4 feet apart for instance, as a workaround. The regulations aren't always so clear cut. If you want to play it safe, you could always apply for a waiver. Again this is with regards to the US and the FAA
Click to expand...

Actors do not qualify. “Directly participating” in this case means the RPIC (pilot) and any visual observers or persons operating the controls. Flight crew only.

That said, the rule says “directly over” and the FAA means that literally. If you’re just off of directly over, you’re good. Most shots are still pretty possible while staying within the rules.

Waivers for flight over people are currently very hard to get and the drone has to be tethered in every waiver I’ve seen.

There are also new rules coming out (they’re at the NPRM stage) that will allow flight over people with certain safety concessions without a waiver.
 
This is what storyboards are for.

Just do a couple of rough sketches showing the shot at:

a) the opening frame
b) the halfway point
c) the final frame
 
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